Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada   

First Pneumonia Day observed

VIJAYAWADA: Members of the Indian Academy of Pediatricians Krishna district unit observed the first world Pneumonia Day here on Monday.

IAP district unit president V. Sudhesh Kumar said that a coalition of over 50 child health promoting organisations from all over the world had decided to observe November 2 as the Pneumonia Day. The primary objective of observing the day was to promote awareness about prevention and treatment of the disease that was claiming the lives of 1.6 million children all over the world per annum.

Quoting statistics of the World Health Organisation, he said that every minute one child was dying of the disease in the country.

The highly respected medical journal ‘The Lancet’ had named two bacteria – Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenza type 2 (Hib) as the leading causative agents of the disease.

He said that India would not achieve the Millennium Development goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds the current rate without tackling the pneumonia burden.

The Government should introduce the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) which immunized children against pneumonia and other diseases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, he said.

Senior pediatrician R Venkateswara Rao said awareness on the disease was becoming more important, because patients of H1N1 virus (Swine Flu) were also succumbing to pneumonia after getting infected by it as a secondary infection. He said the disease was killing more children than AIDS, measles and malaria put together.

Siddhartha Medical College Community Department head R.Nageswara Rao that the lives of several children could be saved with immunisation and administrating vitamin A in the syrup form. IAP district secretary P. Durga Prasad and SMC community department assistant professor Madhavi spoke.

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